Archives: October 2026

After a fender-bender, most people do three things: make sure everyone is okay, swap insurance information, and call their insurance company. California adds a fourth step that a lot of drivers have never heard of, and skipping it can get your license suspended. If anyone was hurt, or anyone's car or property took more than $1,000 in damage, you have to report a car accident to the DMV yourself, on a form called the SR-1, within 10 days. It doesn't matter who caused the crash. It doesn't matter that a police officer wrote a report or that your insurance company [...]

When someone dies because of another person's carelessness, the family is left with grief first and legal questions much later. One of those questions catches many families off guard: who in the family actually has the right to hold the responsible person accountable? California answers that with a statute, not with how close you were to the person who died. The right to bring a wrongful death lawsuit in California belongs to a specific list of people in Code of Civil Procedure section 377.60, and that list is built largely on the state's inheritance rules. The results can feel arbitrary. [...]